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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Difficulty settings

While I was making areas today, I started thinking about difficulty in games, specifically platformers.

When it comes down to it, some people just flat out hate platforming sections. They're in it for the combat, or exploration, or whatever. Next time I start a new game, rather than a single unified difficulty, I think I'll start having separate settings for combat and platforming that are independent of each other.

An example of something it would effect would be things like the delay between disappearing platforms, or other traps. Stuff like that would make a big difference without taking much work. I suppose another example would be removing knockback from traps at certain difficulties.

Of course, I want players to challenge themselves to get better, so I might have to think of ways to reward higher difficulties that don't involve depriving some players of content that everyone else would see. Perhaps a way around it would be having rewards for beating higher difficulties, but having New Game+ options so that players could still get to that content without being amazing at the game.

As for my current progress, I've done all but one of the 6 H-animations. I still need to put together the last section of the demo, make the boss, and a few other misc things. I might just release the demo without the boss, once I get to that point, and add it once it's finished.

Difficulty settings eh. If the game's really short I really wouldn't bother with this too much. Nikujin is a pretty good example of this.

If you're really worried about it you could go the Kingdom Hearts BBS+ route and make a secret ending that's easier to get on harder difficulties. On normal mode you need to 100% the game to get it. On hard mode, just beat the game.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:I found a good way of varying platforming difficulty is game speed:I play a lot of these games on a VM on my laptop. For some reason, the engine's fullscreen scaling on the architecture is quite inefficient.As a result, playing kurovadis/eroico on my laptop plays them at roughly a constant 1/2 speed.This surprisingly makes the game easier in a good way: You get twice as long to hit timings or to react, but you don't get simpler combos or enemies that just suddenly die in 2 shots.

So I'd really recommend making platforming difficulty by putting a variable multiplier into game speed:Make enemies/attacks/jumps/movement take twice as long, and it becomes much easier.Of course, this isn't quite as easy as it sounds: Making sure pixel-precise jumps still fit with a speed change is tricky.Also, you'd probably want H-animations to always run at normal speed...Maybe put in a key that switches to slower game speed (or faster, for hard mode...)That way, people can make passages they struggle with easier as needed.

For the challenge aspect, maybe put an achievement spin on it?Make the option and final screen display "lowest speed/difficulty used",so if people never switch to lower difficulty during game, they get something to show off for it.

I like the system shock perspective, where you can choose where the game is hard and where is easy. Changing the platform's speeds and whatnot seems like a good idea, and about the reward for finishing the game in higher settings maybe you can follow the method in the GBA Metroid games.

In both Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission you are rewarded with a CG of Samus and your clear % as well as run time. The CG would vary depending on how good your time/Collection rate was. This could work well in an hgame where the reward can be a CG or an animation (I think Legend of Kokage had this system).

I'm sorry that this is off topic, but my computer runs Eroico and Kurovadis almost half speed, and I have a feeling it'll do the same with future games. I didn't have this problem before. Does anyone know how I can fix it? I tried googling a solution but nothing came up.

Do you leave your computer running constantly? I've got a strange issue with my own computer that after playing certain Steam games (Dark Souls for example) all game-maker based games run incredibly slow until I reboot my computer. No idea what causes it, but rebooting seems to fix it.

That's probably because some games don't properly exit and continue running in the background Just open your task manager and end any processes that should no longer be there. (and of course, be careful with what you end)

Makes me wonder if a dynamic difficulty would be possible. Like, the amount of time it takes to complete a platforming puzzle would alter platforming difficulty, and the percentage of damage taken by enemies would alter the amount of damage they do. Then again, just thinking about the coding behind it makes me think it would be more effort than its worth.

New Game +, you say? And choosing a higher difficulty on future playthroughs? I like this concept a lot. It allows you to substitute a measure of pure hard-ass insane skill (that very few gamers have at the highest level) with patience and a time investment, while also giving them a chance to improve their skills gradually and not feel like they're starting out totally from scratch.

I'd argue not to use disappearing platforms, but to instead employ other platforming trials instead. Disappearing platforms don't really add a lot to the experience - they're not so much a puzzle as they are a nuisance, and a rather boring one at that. They're just... not clever. They've been around since the first freaking megaman... I'm sure platforming design has evolved since then to include better, more cleverly designed platforming puzzles.

Well, it's not like it hurts anyone. People who crave a challenge will put it on the highest and people who (in this case) only want the porn can set it low. A little work then everyone's happy sounds like a good deal to me.

Just read about the difficulty settings. I think it's a great idea. First time I saw something like that was in Silent Hill where they separated combat from riddle difficulty. It is a very need idea where the player can create their own difficulty for their needs when they play through the game first time, or to enjoy certain parts of the game.Also I think that different rewards for higher difficulty settings is a nice idea itself because it provides a reward for more difficult challenges. Might be some balance work if you think about the New Game +, depending on how you're going to design it. (Like having stuff from the previous run or not.) I'm looking forward to it. ^^

A way to manage difficulty that I really like is having different playable characters, each with their little bonus.For example, Luigi jumps higher than Mario, Peach can float a little, Tails is slower than Sonic but he can fly, Knucles can take other paths by breaking walls...

But it implies that there is more animations, and smart level design.

Another good point about this solution: it paves the way for a second player... but who would play multiplayer hentai, seriously?

If your girlfriend is into anime and hentai....I can see it going over quite well. As for a hentai mmo......you have my interest I will admit though the few I have found are strictly Japanese language and gameplay is kinda....eh. However assuming the H-content is turned off, I can see this working as well too.

There's notbthat many girls that openly are into hentai, so I don't know if it really would be profitable... and for mmo, that would be interesting but we're dealing with a different kind of beast here...

You can always do something like Megaman 6. For a lot of the "tough" platforming sections, you can just use the Rush jet adapter to fly over it all. That used the Rush energy, so players would conserve so they wouldn't have to do a challenge.

Could take a page from "Kid Icarus: Uprising" and implement variable difficulty per level. In KIU, you can spend hearts (the in-game currency) to raise or lower the difficulty. The higher an intensity you choose for any given level, the better the treasures and loot you get out of them. However, if you die on any given intensity, the intensity drops a little, and you lose some of the hearts you bet. This encourages every player to complete a level on the highest intensity possible, which combines strong enemies, faster-paced gameplay, the pressure of betting so many hearts, and the requirement of not dying into one hell of an experience in exchange for the best rewards.